About Us
What is Project Mentor?
Project Mentor is designed to help Columbus City School (CCS) students graduate and empower them for a lifetime of success through strong mentoring relationships.The goal is to empower individual students by focusing on the assets required to improve academic performance and high school graduation, and to positively impact the entire education community— one child at a time.
Project Mentor is a collaboration between CCS and Big Brothers Big Sisters of Central Ohio with primary sponsorship from the Nationwide Foundation. To do it, Project Mentor will need thousands of Central Ohio volunteers to commit one hour a week to one student in need of an additional adult role model. In addition to individuals, Project Mentor is calling on businesses to endorse the program by encouraging their employees to participate.
Community Impact
Today many CCS students face more barriers to achieving their dreams than ever. With outside economic forces working against them, sometimes these young adults need additional help and encouragement to ensure they become productive members of the community.
Project Mentor empowers individual students by focusing on the assets required to improve academic performance and high school graduation. Through strong mentoring relationships, each mentee is coached on developing the tools to become a more confident, competent and caring individual. These assets form a foundation for healthy development, helping students avoid high-risk behaviors, achieve academic success, and, ultimately, choose positive lifestyles.
Project Mentor is designed to positively impact the entire education community. We believe that by mentoring enough children, the entire school environment will change for the better. When too many youth are making negative choices at school, it becomes harder for their fellow students to make positive choices. But when making positive choices is the norm, it becomes easier for everyone to do the right thing.
Children who have a mentor are much more likely to develop the assets they need to succeed and this will impact other children at the school. In turn, our entire community will be affected by ensuring a lower high school dropout rate and a more positive educational experience for our children.
The Plan
We call it a "project" but Project Mentor is really a plan. A big plan. It calls for thousands of volunteers mentoring students throughout CCS. The rollout started in the fall of 2007, and we surpassed our first-year goal of matching over 1,000 mentors with youth. Project Mentor has continued to grow since then, and we now have more than 65 businesses, government organizations, community groups and faith-based organizations providing mentors, as well as the community at large.
While recruiting and maintaining thousands of volunteers is quite a challenge, it is exciting to think about a plan that will have that much of the community participating. It is truly an effort owned by the community, whose members are taking responsibility for its success. This plan creates an opportunity to mobilize in a way never yet accomplished.
